Verify before you send
Run old, imported or bought-in lists through an email verifier and remove invalid and disposable addresses.
Mailcleaner guide · Updated 5 November 2026
How do you reduce your email bounce rate?
To reduce your email bounce rate, verify lists before you send, suppress every hard bounce, check addresses at sign-up, and set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC for your domain. Most bounces come from addresses that don't exist, so removing them before a send is the fastest fix.
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Capabilities
Everything Mailcleaner ships with.
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Layered checks
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Risk and confidence
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Bulk list cleaning
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Suppressions and re-checks
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Domain audit
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API and widget
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What is an email bounce rate?
Your bounce rate is the share of sent emails that couldn't be delivered. If you send 10,000 messages and 300 come back, your bounce rate is 3 percent.
Mailbox providers read a high bounce rate as a sign of a poorly kept list, and they respond by sending more of your mail to spam. A common rule of thumb is to keep bounces under 2 percent of each send.
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What is the difference between a hard and a soft bounce?
- Hard bounce: permanent. The address or domain doesn't exist. Remove it at once.
- Soft bounce: temporary. The mailbox is full, the server is busy, or the message was too big. Retry, and remove the address if it keeps failing.
- Block: the receiving server refused your mail because of your reputation or authentication. Fix the cause, not the list.
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How do you reduce your bounce rate?
Suppress hard bounces
Add every hard bounce to a suppression list so it is never mailed again.
Check at sign-up
Verify addresses on your forms and offer typo fixes, so bad addresses never get in.
Re-check regularly
Re-verify lists every few months, because addresses go stale.
Handle catch-all addresses carefully
Send to them after your engaged contacts, in smaller batches.
Authenticate your domain
Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC so receiving servers trust your mail.
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How does Flaxxa Mailcleaner help lower bounces?
Flaxxa Mailcleaner covers the list side and the domain side:
- Bulk verification of uploaded, pasted or imported lists, with a clean export.
- A suppression list, fed by bounces and complaints from Flaxxa email campaigns, that is checked before any verification.
- A sign-up form widget and an API that verify addresses as they arrive.
- Scheduled re-checks of a connected email marketing tool.
- A domain audit for SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, MTA-STS and TLS-RPT, with the records to add.
FAQ
How to reduce your email bounce rate: common questions
Under 2 percent per send is a common target, and well-kept lists often bounce far less. Rates that climb above that are worth fixing before your next send.
Put it to work
Mailcleaner features for this
List cleaning
Clean an email list in one upload: counts per verdict, a clean CSV or XLSX export, and a suppression list so bad addresses don't creep back in.
Domain checks
Check your domain's SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, MTA-STS and TLS-RPT records, see Gmail and Yahoo requirements, get DNS fixes and test your mail server.
Email verification
Verify one email address or a whole list: a verdict, a 0–100 risk score and a confidence score for each, from a paste, a file, Google Drive or the API.
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